Support Dr. Hiral Tipirneni In an April 24 Special Election for a House of Representatives Seat In Arizona’s 8th Congressional District (Update May 26, 2018)

Update, May 26, 2018: The bad news is that Tipirneni lost to Republican Debbie Lesko in the April special election. The good news is that she only lost by five points in a district that’s redder than red, and she has agreed to run against Lesko in November. Go Hiral!

Support Dr. Hiral Tipirneni in an April 24, 2018 special election for an open House of Representatives seat in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

Tipirneni is an emergency room physician, a cancer research advocate, and a first-time politician. She will face Republican Debbie Lasko for the seat vacated by Republican Trent Franks after he was involved in a bizarre scandal involving him having asked female employees if they would serve as a surrogate mother for his child (scroll down for links).

Tipirneni supports Medicare for all as well as Social Security and Medicaid. She wants to strengthen public schools and make college more affordable. She supports common-sense gun laws and would treat gun violence as a public health issue. She defends reproductive rights. She favors greater government transparency in general and would target wasteful acts such as spending taxpayer dollars on pricey air transport when commercial flights would meet the need.

Tipirnini ran against Brianna Westbrook in the primary and defeated her. Westbrook has since pledged to help Tipirneni in the special election and will focus her own efforts on winning a state senate seat in the fall (scroll down to find a link to an updated OTYCD post on Westbrook).

Tipirneni faces a daunting challenge, but not an impossible one. The Cook Political Report rates Franks’s old seat as Safe Republican. Lasko has state legislature experience, serving as president pro tempore of the Arizona senate before resigning to run in this House of Representatives contest.